Argo - part of the integrated global observation strategy

I assume you're talking about the Argo project, which is a really interesting one, especially because it ties really well into advancements in using massive amounts of data, coordinating ground measurements with satellites, and because it measures a bunch of really different, important, and useful variables (topography, salinity, temperature, weather, etc.) using only a few measurements (position, conductivity and temperature). It's also cool because anyone can check out the data at any time, including right now!

Access to data - Argo Data Management

Now, you're completely right in that in 2006, when the first set of results was released, they didn't show massive warming. In fact, they were thought to show a trend of cooling. However, very quickly, it became apparent to the author of the paper (and one of the research leads) that there were issues in the calculations and data management, relating back to the manufacturing of a significant number of the buoys, as well as another type of device he used to supplement their measurements called an XTB (expendable bathythermograph).

http://w3.jcommops.org/FTPRoot/Argo/Doc/Nature-2007.pdf

By then, other NASA scientists had looked at the Argo data, and how it didn't make sense in terms of the body of knowledge (which had been seen to be very accurate in other regards) on the subject, and you can see an example of criticism of the data in a paper below (starting on page 16), which compared the Argo results to 3 other different forms of climate data collection from the same time frame.

http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/eos_observ/pdf/Jan_Feb08.pdf

After correcting for the bias discovered in the initial Argo data, it became apparent that warming was occurring, but at a rate even lower than what you've posted, estimated at only about 0.03-0.06 C between 1957 and 1996. However, this only accounts for depths to around 3000m, and even then they were unsure if additional biases were present in the system. It wasn't all bad news though, the study (after being reanalyzed and the known biases smoothed out, naturally) provided a baseline model that helped smooth out a lot of variability in earlier studies in terms of ocean warming (which apparently go nuts every time an El Nino event happens due to the rapid shifts in temperature during those events).

So while they still hadn't figured out why the data from Argo didn't really agree with current findings, they were pretty happy that they'd been able to finally make sense of heat absorption, sea level change, and glacial levels in relation to each other in the 1961-2003 region. In terms of why the disagreement exists after this point, they're still not sure, but scientists suspect that volcanic forcing may have an impact, which is not accounted for in current models and is currently not well understood.

Here's a cool article on how the whole thing went down by NASA's Earth Observatory blog:

Correcting Ocean Cooling : Feature Articles

Comparing the current Argo data to temperature data from the HMS Challenger expedition has also led some scientists to conclude that ocean warming may have begun 135 years ago, which would coincide with around when the Industrial revolution began to pick up steam.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4692767...ans-started-warming-years-ago-study-suggests/

It's also worth noting that a similar study done more recently in lakes as opposed to the ocean found a 0.45C/decade rise pretty much across the planet, but with increased rise in the northern hemisphere.

NASA Study Finds Earth's Lakes are Warming - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

 

This thread in a nutshell.

 

  Sounds about right.

 

This is why I hate the "no political discussion" rule. People call me crazy because I can't post the evidence. Oh well. I'd rather know the truth and be called crazy than to be a blind sheep walking straight into the slaughter.

I will admit that I've listened to Glenn Beck. Not on a regular basis, but a handful of times to see what all the fuss was about. What I found funny was that he presented facts for all his claims. Most times, actual audio clips of the people in question outright saying what he was accusing them of. Yet, no one ever refuted the evidence, they just called him crazy. I'm sorry, but calling a man crazy does not delete audio of the President saying he wants $4 per gallon gas. So I doubt my posting evidence would make a difference. It'd be ignored and I'd still be called crazy.

 

I'm gonna call this study bollocks solely on the basis that it's completely ignoring the fact that deliberate deforestation didn't exist and the ratio of methane/oxygen release in general was entirely different than it is today.

 

I think the articles reporting the study have been somewhat disingenuous in terms of it's scope. To my knowledge, the study basically just said "look, we've made a model to estimate how much methane dinosaurs were putting out. Factoring for their size and likely populations, here's how much methane they released. Oh look, it's almost equivalent to the carbon greenhouse output for the modern era, maybe dinosaur farts/burps had an impact on climate back then."

The focus seemed to be much more on how much methane was being produced in dino-guts, not the resulting impact on their environment, but I completely agree, there were a lot of differing factors between now and the Mezozoic that would tie into the overall impact.

 

I'm reminded of when a few super volcano's blew their tops which darkened the sky for days, and yet that had no effect on global warming yet according to most global warming fanatics it should have since it was a lot more polution in one incident then man has done in several years.

 

Cite your sources please.

Were you talking about the only "supervolcano" eruption in the last couple hundred years, Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815, which changed weather patterns sufficient around the planet to cause massive famines and lead to 1815 being referred to as "the year without a summer"?

Year Without a Summer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Because otherwise I don't know what you're talking about.

 

Supervolcano cowfarts are the true enemy.

 

You know what the really sad thing is?

The whole climate science, and science in general, has become so politicized that I can't trust anything what anyone says about global warming. Money takes priority over truth.

 

That'd be a pretty good name for a Surf-punk band.



Were you talking about Eyjafjallajökull's (I have no idea how to pronounce this, ask TrickyDisco) eruption in 2010, Asterios? Because if so, there was actually an interesting consequence of that. Although the eruption poured around 0.15 million tonnes of CO2 into the air each day, it prevented over 100,000 commercial airline flights to and from Europe, which would have contributed over 0.3 million tonnes of CO2 per day. This means a SAVINGS of 1.3-2.8 million tonnes of CO2 during the length of the disruption (during which the volcano put out only a fraction of the world's CO2 emissions, obviously). WILD, right?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7101517.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1185799

Iceland volcano causes fall in carbon emissions as eruption grounds aircraft | Environment | guardian.co.uk

In terms of an overall effect, however, clearly a catastrophic event like the eruption had consequences beyond just carbon emissions, such as the disruptions to leisure/business travel and economy (including a ton of spoiled pharmaceuticals and flowers, apparently). It's long-term impact on the weather are not understood (although some short-term effects were observed close to the eruption zone), it's thought this eruption won't have a major impact compared to the eruptions of say, Mt. Pinatubo and Mt. Tabora. This eruption was sort of unique, in that even the ash was relatively harmless compared to other eruptions even in Iceland. It didn't have the levels of fluorine expected (which can be highly toxic) and was composed heavily of iron oxide, which when rained into the ocean, may actually be responsible for increased CO2 absorption observed in the atlantic shortly afterward (it is thought to be unlikley this was a chance coincidence).

http://www.macaulay.ac.uk/policyrel...11/MLURI-response-to-volcanic-ash-impacts.pdf

 

No I'm talking about Krakatoa 1883 eruption of Krakatoa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and Vesuvius Mount Vesuvius - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia , Santorini Minoan eruption - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and others which the one you referred to was nothing but a pale comparison to these bad boys when they blew up, were talking covering the entire globe in darkness badness.

heck the one you mention didn't even make it onto the top 10 list of explosions:

Mega-Colossal Explosions: Earth's Super Volcanic Eruptions


These are eruptions, and yet they didn't do any severe global warming problems, the eruption you mention was nothing but a small volcano that popped its top and that was it, very minor compared to others.

 

None of those are considered supervolcanoes though, as their confirmed volume ejected was less than 1000km^3...

To be a supervolcano, the eruptions you mentioned would have needed to be an 8 or above on the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI), and the ones you've suggested range from 5-7 on that scale (by comparison, the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull event was a 4). Which is why I was confused. The super-explosion link you posted is basically all supervolcanoes though, and Mt. Tabora is the most recent.

If you're asking why there was no notable increase in temperature accompanying krakatoa's eruption, it likely has something to do with temperature increases being dependent on heat trapping. The more carbon dioxide (or methane) in the atmosphere, the more heat is trapped from the sun as opposed to reflecting back into space. However, there are other factors that can affect this trapping and reflectivity. The dense ash cover (as well as sulfur-compound bearing clouds) from krakatoa, which was observed to darken the sky for years following, reflected sunlight and prevented solar heat from reaching the earth. As a result, a global drop in temperatures was observed in the year following, and weather and temperature patterns were disrupted for years following. So the eruption itself blunted it's impact on temperature rise through carbon emissions (while causing havok in terms of weather patterns and tsunamis), in the same way that some current theories suggest that advances made in removing forms of particulate matter from industrial emmissions may actually speed temperature rises by removing the increase in reflectivity that previously accompanied corresponding gaseous emissions.

Aerosols: Tiny Particles, Big Impact : Feature Articles

Clearing smog has led to 'global brightening' - environment - 05 May 2005 - New Scientist

It's also worth noting that the Krakatoa explosion took place right when the industrial revolution was starting to really get going, so there's likely some overlap in terms of observed impact between the two.

As to the other two eruptions you posted from the classical and pre-classical (?) era, it's difficult to make conclusions given the rarity of records from those times and the difference in measumrent techniques between now and then, but both events seem to be followed by similar consequences as Krakatoa, leading to famine, unusual cold, and catastrophic weather patterns. As there was no major industry producing substantial emissions worldwide at that time, it could be that the effects of these events were similar to what happened after the krakatoa event in terms of global temperature.

 

I agree. Nothing like going into a fight with your arms tied behind your back, and like you said, even if you could say what you wanted to say it would be ignored.

 

Yep!

 

This is precisely why I pretty much stopped giving two shits about nearly everything that's reported nowadays because it seems like money talks and everyone has some sort of agenda up their sleeves. That or its all bullshit made up in order to scare other people. Remember the bird flu epidemic, yeah so much for that epidemic. Call me when machine gunning, flesh eating zombies start rising up and just maybe I might be a little concerned.

 

but therein lies the crux of the issue, the hole in the ozone layer is new (reletively) along with global warming, and yet neither is new to this planet since they have happened before so to insinuate that man is the cause even a minor cause is on the point of absurdity, since man could not have caused this before, and to top it all off, the last global warming occured while man (Homo-Sapien) was around and in his infancy and no Dino's to blame it on, unless you want to blame the mega-fauna ?

 

While climate shifts have occurred in earth's history before humanity, the issue is not that one is occurring now, but that changes are occurring now in a way that does not fit observed natural trends in the historical data. Temperatures have risen even during human history (much of the Medieval period was during a "warm" period), but they have never risen so sharply, or for as prolonged a period, as they have been observed to in recent years (the biggest spike, which we are still riding, appears to begin around 1910). It is hardly absurd to think that this massive rise in global average temperature is related to the massive amounts of a known thermally insulative gas poured into the atmosphere on an ongoing basis, the industrialized release of which has been seen to correlate to the start of the trend. As we've shown through even just the examples shown between you and I, global warming and cooling is just one aspect of climate, and not only is the planet (and humanity) very sensitive to even slight changes in temperature, but these changes correspond to other related and semi-related phenomena, such as extreme weather patterns. Your example of ozone depletion is just one where humanity can clearly see it's impact on the planet, as well as the damaging implications of such impact. If anything, it is absurd to state that our actions cannot possibly affect the world around us and specifically our atmosphere, while at the same time acknowledging they can.

 

actually the last major global warming epidemic occured 12,000 years ago and was far quicker and more devestating then anything occuring now, it was in fact the cause of the end of the last minor ice age, in fact it was so devestating it wiped out the current Human Population on the North American continent which predates the Clovis culture (this pre-clovis culture is believed to have come over from Europe by way of the Europe/America Ice Bridge, during the previous ice age), this culture was wiped out during a major temeprature change that occured very fast and wrecked havoc with the weather and such causing destructive dust storms and such. now, how do you ask did this situation occured?, well it occured thru basic "natural" global warming, which caused the North American Glaciers around the great lakes regions to melt and alter the flow of water thru the St. Laurence river into the ocean which unstabilized the water temperature globally, wrecking havoc with the weather and other such things, this is what is occuring now with the ice caps melting and water tempuratures getting colder.

now tell em how a race of humans barely in their infancy and barely with knowledge of fire could cause a worse situation back then, then what is going on now, if by your synopsis that humans are the cause of global warming or at the very least adding to it, it should be much worse then it is now?

 

Well, the conspiracy is actually much more insidious. It's interesting to note that due to a feeling that there was unwillingness for some folks to acknowledge the problem and work toward mitigating humanity's contribution to global climate change, a secretive cabal of powerful scientists decided to make that choice for all of us.

Starting in the late 1970s, skipping the 1980s, and then resuming in the early 1990s, plans were laid to interrupt the global economy and slow down industrial growth. (From here on, we'll call this this dastardly phenomena "economic cooling" for the purposes of this explanation.)

The idea was simple: Western countries have steadily moved toward consumer-based or service economies with a shrinking industrial base and thus contributing less greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In order to take implicit action against climate change exacerbated by human activity, they came to the treacherous conclusion that the world economy would need to be sabatoged. Those developing countries, like China, began to emit carbon dioxide, among other greenhouse gases, at a much higher rate than their effectively post-industrial predecessors like the United States. Without the ability to effect control over developing industrial bases directly, the decision was made to lower interest rates and encourage financial institutions to over-sell mortgages to the unqualified and then package those in securities, which were insured through a devised money-making scheme called credit default swaps.

Knowing very well that this system of exponential growth in both real estate and worthless credit default swaps would be untenable, it was wholeheartedly encouraged at all levels of media as the patriotic duty of the citizens of the United States. (Incidentally, this also enabled a few select fat-cat scientists to accumulate the funds necessary to renovate abandoned nuclear missile silos in Kansas, which would then either become beach-front property if global warming was permitted to continue unabated or shelter from the unwashed service workers set to dominate the future workforce.)

Once the economy finally collapsed, economic cooling began. The consumer-driven economies of the West could no longer continue to feed their insatiable appetite for stuff and industries were, in turn, shuttered. Along with the recent issues in the Middle East, which was also an exercise intended to curb global warming through higher gas prices, the carbon multiplier effect has been reduced.

In effect, the economic devastation of the past few years has prevented immediate environmental devastation, though a few of those insidious scientists now admit that their plan may have been implemented too late to mitigate global warming's long term effects.

I don't have any sources, but you're a sheep if you don't believe.

Also, reverse vampires had something to do with it as well.